There's a silver lining in every dark cloud and in the Air India pilots' strike, the silver lining is for the private airlines.
The strike, which entered its ninth day on Thursday, is resulting in Air India losing out on carrying 22,500 passengers a day, amounting to a revenue loss of Rs 20 crore daily.
The national carrier's daily seat offerings have come down to 9,500, against 30,000-32,000 on normal days. A large chunk of the balance is being picked up by the private airlines.
Private airlines are carrying anything 15,000-16,000 of Air India's domestic passengers resulting in an increase in the passenger load factor by up to 7 per cent, according to Civil Aviation Ministry officials.
The strike comes as a dent to Air India's attempt at returning to profit by 2015. As part of a financial restructuring plan, Air India has set a target to enhance revenues by Rs 5,000 crore and reduce costs by Rs 4,000 crore per annum.
However, falling load factor will not bring any joy to the national carrier which already had the dubious distinction of having the lowest load factor in March at 61.1 per cent. The market share slipped to 14.9 per cent bringing it down to number four on the list of domestic carriers.
Compared to this, Jet Airways had a load factor of 75.9 per cent, while its subsidiary Jet Lite, had a load factor of 77 per cent for the month of March. The numbers are likely to go up further on account of the pilots strike by anything up to 4-5 per cent, according to industry sources.
Low cost carriers, GoAir and IndiGo have by far outperformed Air India in terms of load factors. GoAir load factor was 82.1 per cent in March while for IndiGo it was 81.2 per cent.
More Passengers, Increased Fares
With the demand for seats going up as a result of Air India's cancelled flights, private airlines had also cashed in by jacking up fares.
The first day of the strike witnessed fares going up by up to 50 per cent. A Delhi-Mumbai ticket on low-cost airline IndiGo stood at Rs 7,173 compared with the normal range of Rs 3,000-4,000. The situation was similar on SpiceJet, Jet Airways and Kingfisher.
Combined with higher fares and more passengers, Air India's loss had turned out to be a gain for private carriers. As the national carrier struggles to compete, the pilots' strike comes as a major bump in the road back to the top for Air India.